Devouring the Green: Fear of a Human Planet by Sam Witt

Organized around a series of questions drawing attention to how the 21st century has complicated our experiences of nature, the body, and human activity, Devouring the Green pushes an exciting range of contemporary poets to resist nostalgic, simplified notions of our human place in the world and, rather, to focus unflinchingly on the many ways we entangle with—and, by our presence, irrevocably change—the world around us. The poems gathered here are alternately visionary, wry, celebratory, angry, elegiac, and apocalyptic—dizzyingly broad in their scope and, above all else, timely. This is a wonderfully unique, ambitious, and challenging anthology.” – Wayne Miller, poet & editor, The City, Our City and Literary Publishing in the 21st Century “What a harrowing and ultimately energizing anthology Sam Witt has created in Devouring the Green. Here, the human merges with the cyborg or, in moments that seem both Whitmanian and darkly fabulist, all of us merge uncomfortably with the natural world we are, simultaneously, destroying. “Would you call humans an invasive species?” Witt asks in one of his many prompts that inspired the poets in this collection. “Are the dead an invasive species?” Wild, visionary, and cacophonous, these poems work to position our selves anew and, so, ask us to think about our responsibilities to others and to our environment in radical, discomforting ways.” – Kevin Prufer, poet and editor, Churches and Into English: An Anthology of Multiple Translations

FULL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Samuel Ace is the author of three poetry collections: Normal Sex, Home in three days. Don’t wash., and, most recently, Stealth, with Maureen Seaton (Chax Press). He is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, the Astraea Lesbian Writer’s Prize in Poetry, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry, as well as a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His work has been widely anthologized and appears most recently in Aufgabe, Black Clock, Fence, The Atlas Review, Mandorla, Rhino, Versal, Tupelo Quarterly, The Volta and Troubling the LIne: Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics.

Will Alexander is a poet, aphorist, essayist, novelist, philosopher, visual artist, self-taught pianist, and author of over twenty books. He is an American Book Award Winner, a PEN Oakland National Book Award Winner, as well as both a Whiting Fellow and a California Arts Council Fellow. His work has been collected in libraries around the world. For him, the 26 letters of the alphabet carry in themselves the capacity of endlessness, the latter being simultaneous with creation as alterity, which, by its very nature supersedes the language which extolls the “everyday.”

Doug Anderson’s first full-length book of poems, The Moon Reflected Fire, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and his second book, Blues for Unemployed Secret Police, a grant from the Academy of American Poets. He has received grants and fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Massachusetts Artists Foundation and other organizations. Other books include a memoir, Keep Your Head Down (W.W. Norton, 2009) and poems, Horse Medicine, some which can be found in Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Field, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. A writer and photographer, he lives in Palmer, Massachusetts, where he is director of development for Blue Star Equiculture, a horse rescue facility and organic farm.

Christopher J. Arabadjis studied physics for 14 years at SUNY Buffalo and UMass Amherst prior to earning an M.F.A. at Pratt Institute. He has worked as a software engineer in Southern California, a test specialist in Iowa, and as a library administrator in Brooklyn. His art has been exhibited in New York City, Iowa City, and the greater metropolitan areas of Boston and San Francisco. He lives in Manhattan with his husband and cat, and commutes two hours each day to work.

Rosetta Ballew-Jennings is most at ease amidst the moxie of old houses and cemeteries. She is fond of home concoctions and remedies, half-begun projects, and made-for-television movies. Her M.F.A. is from Texas State University, and she lives in historic Saint Joseph, Missouri. Her debut poetry collection, Is the Room (Jaded Ibis Press), was published in 2014.

Stephanie Berger is the Executive Director of The Poetry Society of New York and co-creator of The Poetry Brothel, The Typewriter Project, and The New York City Poetry Festival. She is the author of IN THE MADAME’S HAT BOX (Dancing Girl Press, 2011) and co-author of THE GREY BIRD: THIRTEEN EMOJI POEMS IN TRANSLATION (Coconut Books, 2014) with Carina Finn.

Charles Bernstein is a venture poet and operative specializing in founding and developing innovative new media platforms and non-media portals through his Panacea Holdings. He is CFO of Poets Ludicrously Aimless Yearning (PLAY) and Director of Dysraphic Studies at the Institute for Avant-Garde Comedy and Stand-up Poetry. His books include My Side of the Street Is Not on Your Map, Buddy; Elusive Allusions: Selected Koans; and the national best seller Stupid Men, Smart Choices.

Simeon Berry lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has been an Associate Editor for Ploughshares, and won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant and a Career Chapter Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters. His work appears in Crazyhorse, AGNI, Colorado Review, Blackbird, DIAGRAM, The Iowa Review, American Letters & Commentary, and many other journals. His first book, Ampersand Revisited, won the 2013 National Poetry Series (Fence Books), and his second book, Monograph, won the 2014 National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press).

David Blair’s first book Ascension Days was chosen by Thomas Lux for the Del Sol Poetry Prize, and his poems have appeared in Agni, Boston Review, InDigest, Ploughshares, Slate Magazine, and the anthologies The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Zoland Poetry. He is an Associate Professor at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Massachusetts. He grew up in Pittsburgh but has lived and worked around Boston since the nineties. In the Fall of 2014, he will be teaching a class in the M.F.A. Program in Writing at the University of New Hampshire.

Daniel Borzutzky’s books include In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy (Nightboat, 2015); The Book of Interfering Bodies (Nightboat, 2011); The Ecstasy of Capitulation (BlazeVox, 2007); and Arbitrary Tales (Ravenna Press, 2005). His poetry translations include include Raúl Zurita’s The Country of Planks (Action Books, 2015); Song for his Disappeared Love (Action Books, 2010); and Jaime Luis Huenún’s Port Trakl (Action Books, 2008). His work has been recognized by grants from the PEN American Center, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. He lives in Chicago.

Susan Briante is the author of two books of poetry: Utopia Minus and Pioneers in the Study of Motion, both published by Ahsahta Press. She is finishing work on a new collection, The Market Wonders, inspired by the current economic crisis. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of Arizona.

Andrea Cardinal is a half-Korean American who grew up in San Antonio, TX. As an adult, she lived several years in South Korea, Germany, and Madagascar. Currently, she attends Harvard University where she is completing a creative thesis in the honors program under the poet Josh Bell.

Jirí Cêch’s books include Comes Life: a poetic sequence and Whither: Poems of Exile, winner of the Mennstrausse Poetry Award. His work has been published in journals and anthologies including, Pleiades (introduced by H. L. Hix), The Melic Review, Poets Against the War, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales, (Wayne State University Press) and &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing. Jiri Cech disappeared in Botswana in 2009. Though presumed killed by a lioness, his body was never recovered.

Joseph Chapman earned an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Virginia, and his poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Cincinnati Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his partner Julia Hansen.

Ewa Chrusciel has two books in Polish: Furkot and Sopilki and two books in English, Strata, which won the 2009 international book contest and is published with Emergency Press in 2011 and Contraband of Hoopoe with Omnidawn Press published in September 2014. Her poems have been featured in Jubilat, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Lana Turner, Spoon River Review, Aufgabe among others. She has translated Jack London, Joseph Conrad, I.B. Singer as well as Jorie Graham, Lyn Hejinian and Cole Swensen into Polish. She is an associate professor at Colby-Sawyer College.

Carol Ciavonne’s poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Colorado Review, New American Writing and How2, among other journals. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Poetry Flash, Xantippe, and Pleiades. She is the author of Birdhouse Dialogues (LaFi 2013; with artist Susana Amundaraín) and her first collection, Azimuth (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). Ciavonne has also collaborated with Amundaraín on several theater pieces, and has worked with the innovative The Imaginists theater collective. She lives in Santa Rosa, California.

Maggie Cleveland lives in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and works for the National Elevator Industry Educational Program. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her poems have been included in the journals The Offending Adam, qarrtsiluni, Newport Review, Elephant, BURP, Amerarcana, and others; as well as Ocean Voices (Spinner Books) and Tingujt E Eres (LSHK, Kosovo). ATOM FISH, a chapbook, is published by One Time Press (New London, CT; 2012).

Elizabeth J. Colen is the author of poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012), as well as flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011) and the hybrid long poem / lyric essay, The Green Condition (Ricochet Editions, 2014). She is editor of the new Bowerbird memoir series for Jaded Ibis Press and teaches at Western Washington University.

Matthew Cooperman is the author of the text + image collaboration Imago for the Fallen World, w/Marius Lehene (Jaded Ibis Press, 2013), Still: of the Earth as the Ark which Does Not Move (Counterpath Press, 2011), DaZE (Salt Publishing Ltd, 2006) and A Sacrificial Zinc (Pleiades/LSU, 2001), winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize, as well as three chapbooks. A founding editor of Quarter After Eight, and co-poetry editor of Colorado Review, he teaches in the Creative Writing program at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children. More information: www.matthewcooperman.com

Colleen Coyne is the author of the chapbook Girls Mistaken or Ghosts (dancing girl press, 2014), and her work appears in The DIAGRAM, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, Handsome, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches writing and works as a freelance writer and editor.

Ashley De Souza is a short story writer and poet. Her work appears in The Onyx, Framingham State University’s literary journal, which is entirely run by students. She was a participant in the Salem Poetry Seminar in 2012, directed by J.D. Scrimgeour, and was also awarded one of the Marjorie Sparrow Literary Awards for poetry in 2014. She is currently studying English literature and Creative Writing at Framingham State University. Her poem in Devouring the Green: Fear of a Human Planet is her first publication.

Debra Di Blasi is founding publisher of the multimedia company Jaded Ibis Productions and its imprint Jaded Ibis Press. Books include The Jirí Chronicles; Drought & Say What You Like; Prayers of an Accidental Nature; and What the Body Requires. She is recipient of a James C. McCormick Fellowship in Fiction (Christopher Isherwood Foundation), Thorpe Menn Book Award, Cinovation Screenwriting Award, and The DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Award. Her writing is included in leading anthologies of innovative writing and has been adapted to film, radio, theatre, and audio in the U.S. and abroad. More at jadedibisproductions.com/debra-di-blasi

Curtis Emery is a poet from Massachusetts. He lives somewhere between the intersection of light and dark and excess and his work is published in [In] Parentheses New Modernism, Boston Poetry Magazine and translated into German with the Berlin publication, Kathedrale19. Emery is currently pursuing his M.F.A. at Sierra Nevada College.

Marlon L. Fick is the author of four books (poetry, fiction, and translation), including El Niño de Safo, Selected Poems, Histerias Minimas, The Nowhere Man: a novel (Jaded Ibis, 2015), and The River Is Wide. He is the recipient of an NEA grant for literature and has also received the ConaCulta, the equivalent of an NEA from the government of Mexico. He and his wife have been residing in China.

Carina Finn’s first book, LEMONWORLD & Other Poems, was a finalist for the 2011 Gatewood Prize, and published by Co.Im.Press in 2013. Her second full-length collection, INVISIBLE REVEILLE, will be published by Coconut Books in October 2014. She is also the author of the chapbooks, I HEART MARLON BRANDO (Wheelchair Party Press, 2010) and MY LIFE IS A MOVIE (Birds of Lace: A Feminist Press, 2012).

Carol Frost’s new collection of poetry, Entwined: Three Lyric Sequences, appears September, 2014 from Tupelo. Earlier collections include Love and Scorn: Selected Poems, Pure, and I Will Say Beauty. Her poems have appeared in four Pushcart Anthologies, and she is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Grants. She teaches at Rollins College, where she is the Theodore Bruce and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Professor of English.

John Gallaher’s fifth book of poetry is In a Landscape, coming out the fall from BOA. As an editor, his most recent book is Time Is a Toy: The Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt (with Laura Boss), published by University of Akron, 2014.

Carla Gannis (@carla_gannis) has exhibited in solo and group art exhibitions nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of several awards, including a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in Computer Arts, an Emerge 7 Fellowship from the Aljira Art Center, and a Chashama AREA Visual Arts Studio Award. Features on Gannis’s work appears in Art Critical, NY Arts Magazine, Animal Magazine, and Collezioni Edge, and has been reviewed in The New York Times, The LA Times, The Daily News, and The Village Voice. She holds an M.F.A. in Painting from Boston University, and is currently Assistant Chair of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute in New York City.

Carmen Giménez-Smith earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. She was named to Poetry Society of America’s biennial New American Poets series, and received a Howard Foundation Fellow in Creative Nonfiction. Her memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds, received an American Book Award. Goodbye, Flicker: Poems, received the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Giménez-Smith is publisher of Noemi Press and editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol; she serves on editorial committee at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. An assistant professor in the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at New Mexico State University, Giménez-Smith also teaches in Ashland University’s Program.

Dmitri Golynko has five books of poems: Homo Scribens (1994), The Directory (2001), Concrete Doves (2003), As It Turned Out (Ugly Duckling Press, 2008) and most recently What It Was and Other Arguments (2013). His poetry has been widely translated, and appears in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies, including Graywolf Press’s New European Poets (2008). A faculty member at St. Petersburg University of Cinema and Television, and a contributing editor at Moscow Art Magazine, Golynko publishes extensively on contemporary art and cinema.

Benjamin S. Grossberg’s latest collection, Space Traveler, was recently published by the University of Tampa Press. His previous books are Sweet Core Orchard (University of Tampa, 2009), winner of the 2008 Tampa Review Prize and a Lambda Literary Award, and Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath (Ashland Poetry Press, 2007). His poems have appeared widely, including in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. He teaches creative writing at the University of Hartford.

j/j hastain is a collaborator, writer and maker of things, and the inventor of The Mystical Sentence Projects. j/j hastain is author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), The Non-Novels (Spuyten Duyvil) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance of Experimental Realisms. j/j’s writing appears in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe and Tarpaulin Sky. j/j hastain has collaborated with t thillemann, on Approximating Diapason, Clef Manifesto, and Snag. The subjection published herein appears in their book, Tongue a Queer Anomaly.

Ian Hatcher is a text/sound/performance artist and programmer living in Brooklyn. He is the author of Prosthesis (Poor Clauidia, 2015). Recent projects include two poetry apps for iPad: Vniverse, with Stephanie Strickland; and Abra, with Amaranth Borsuk and Kate Durbin, published in conjunction with a hybrid artist’s book by the Center for Book and Paper Arts. More info: ianhatcher.net

Vincent Hayes is a fiction and poetry writer and lifelong resident of the Greater Boston area. This is his first publication after the completion of his undergraduate studies at Framingham State University where he studied Town and Regional Planning and minored in Writing. During this time, his work has been recognized by poets such as D.A. Powell, Brian Turner, and Simeon Berry. He is devoting his life to the economic advancement of others and strives to embody the dissolution of America’s middleclass through his writing.

Stephen Hitchcock lives in Charlottesville, VA, where he works as the Director and Chaplain of The Haven, a day shelter and social resource center for the homeless and extremely poor in Central Virginia. He graduated from the University of British Columbia, Regent College, with a Master of Divinity and is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Several of the poems in this anthology are set in Vancouver’s skid row area, called the Downtown Eastside. He has published poems in storySouth, Geez, and Streetlight Magazine.

H. L. Hix’s most recent poetry collection is As Much As, If Not More Than (Etruscan Press, 2014). He lives in the mountain west with his partner, the poet Kate Northrop, and writes in a studio that was once a barn. His website is www.hlhix.com.

Lily Hoang is the author of four books, including Changing, recipient of the PEN Beyond Margins Award, and Unfinished: Stories (Jaded Ibis Press, 2011). With Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she edited the anthology The force of What’s Possible: Writer on the Avant-Garde and Accessibility. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at New Mexico State University, where she is Associate Department Head and Prose Editor for Puerto del Sol.

Bernard Horn’s book, Our Daily Words, won the Old Seventy Creek Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2011 Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His translations from the Hebrew of the poems of Yehuda Amichai have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines. He is author of Facing the Fires: Conversations with A. B. Yehoshua, the only book in English about Israel’s pre-eminent novelist; the “definitive examination of Herman Melville’s influence on The Naked and the Dead;” and the story, “My Father, the Swimmer,” published by Tupelo Quarterly. He is Professor of English Emeritus at Framingham State University. The poems in Devouring the Green are part of an artist’s book-in-progress, a collaboration with artist Linda Klein.

Brenda Iijima’s involvements occur at the often unnamable conjunctions and mutations of poetry, choreography, research movement, animal studies, speculative non-fiction, care-giving and forlorn histories. Her book, Untimely Death is Driven Beyond the Horizon was published by 1913 Press in 2015. She is also the publisher of Portable Press @Yo-Yo Labs and will publish the 50th book from the press this year.

Tim Jones-Yelvington is a Chicago writer, performer and nightlife personality. He is the author of Evan’s House and the Other Boys that Live There (in They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, Rose Metal Press) and This is a Dance Movie! (forthcoming, Tiny Hardcore Press).

Helena Kaminski did graduate work at Harvard, and studied with Thom Gunn at UC-Berkeley. She writes on a broad range of matters, including gay and non-gay themed material, and is published in the Gay and Lesbian Review, Worldwide, and the Gramsci Monument, a public arts project in NYC that has received wide attention. She has also published in The Paris Review, New Directions, AGNI and other magazines.

Aby Kaupang is the author of Little “g” God Grows Tired of Me (SpringGun Press, 2013), Absence is Such a Transparent House (Tebot Bach, 2011) and Scenic Fences | Houses Innumerable (Scantily Clad Press, 2008). Her poems have appeared in FENCE, La Petite Zine, Dusie, Verse, Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Parthenon West, PANK, Aufgabe, 14 Hills, Interim, Caketrain and other journals. She holds both an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a Master’s of Occupational Therapy from Colorado State University. More information at www.abykaupang.com

Claudia Keelan is the author of seven books poetry, including Utopic (Beatrice Hawley Award, 2001), Missing Her (2009) from New Issues Press, and the verse-drama O, Heart recently published by Barrow Street in the spring of 2014. A book of translations Truth of My Songs: The Poems of the Trobairitz is forthcoming from Omnidawn Press in 2015. She is currently finishing a book of essays entitled Ecstatic Émigré, which were written for column still underway in the American Poetry Review. She teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she is director of creative writing and the editor of Interim (www.interimmag.org).

Mandy Keifetz is a finishing school drop out. Her work appears in The Massachusetts Review, Penthouse, Vogue, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, among others. Her novel Flea Circus: a Brief Bestiary of Grief won the AWP Award Series in the Novel. Her first novel, Corrido, has been optioned by a UK production company. She was a Fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2002 and her plays have been staged in New York, London, Cambridge, Montréal, and Oslo. She lives in Brooklyn with a composer, their child, and a hound dog.

Kerry Shawn Keys is an American poet, playwright, children’s book author, and wonderscript (short fiction: parodies; fables; farce; tales) writer. He has published dozens of books. Keys has received awards from the Poetry Society of America, from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has received a translation Laureate from the Lithuanian Writers Union; he also held Fulbright grants for African-Brazilian studies, and as an Associate Professor at Vilnius University teaching translation theory and creative composition. His most recent books are Night Flight, (poems), and Pienas, (fiction). He contributes The Republic of Užupis Dispatch for Poetry International, San Diego. He divides his time between Vilnius and Pennsylvania.

Kevin Killian is a San Francisco-based writer and artist. His books include Bedrooms Have Windows, Shy, Little Men, Impossible Princess, Action Kylie, two volumes of Selected Amazon Reviews, and Tweaky Village. Recent projects include a novel, Spreadeagle, from Publication Studio, and Tagged, intimate portraits of poets, artists, writers, musicians, and so on.

Bill Knott’s poetry collections include The Naomi Poems, Book One: Corpse and Beans (1968), Becos (1983), Outremer, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize (1988), Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999 (2000), The Unsubscriber (2004), and Stigmata Errata Etcetera (2007), a collaboration with collages by the artist Star Black. Bill Knott died in 2014.

Ilyse Kusnetz’s book, Small Hours, received the 2014 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry from Truman State University Press. She received her M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and her Ph.D. in Feminist and Postcolonial British Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Her poetry appears in Crab Orchard Review, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Stone Canoe, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Cimmaron Review, Connotation Press: an Online Artifact, Women’s Voice for Change, and other journals. She teaches at Valencia College.

Tanya Larkin is the author of two collections of poetry, My Scarlet Ways, winner of the 2011 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, and Hothouse Orphan (Convulsive Editions), a chapbook of poems accompanied by the pen and ink drawings of New York artist Ben Gocker. Her most recent poems have appeared in The Boston Review, Ping Pong, and Fugue. She lives in Somerville, MA with her son.

Esther Lee has written Spit, a poetry collection selected for the Elixir Press Poetry Prize (2011) and her chapbook, The Blank Missives (Trafficker Press, 2007). Her poems and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Verse Daily, Salt Hill, Lantern Review, Good Foot, Swink, Hyphen, Born Magazine, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, she received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University where she served as Editor-in-Chief for Indiana Review, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Utah.

Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), and Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013). She is Co-Editor of [out of nothing], Reviews Editor at HTMLGIANT, Editor of the new #RECURRENT Novel Series for Jaded Ibis Press, Executive Editor at Entropy, and Founder/CEO of POTG Design. More at: http://janicel.com.

Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). Her most recent books are This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], 2015), How to be Another (Cervená Barva Press, 2014), and State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, Word For/Word, and Yew. More at www.susanlewis.net.

Micah Ling earned her M.F.A. in poetry at Indiana University. She currently teaches in the English department at Fordham University in Manhattan. Her most recent collection of poetry, Settlement, is published by Sunnyoutside Press.

Timothy Liu is the author of nine books of poems, including Don’t Go Back To Sleep (Saturnalia Books). He lives in Manhattan with his husband.

Reb Livingston is the author of Bombyonder (Bitter Cherry Books 2014), God Damsel (No Tell Books 2010) and Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books 2007). She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.

Cecilia Llompart was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Florida. She received her B.A. from Florida State University, and her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia. Llompart’s first collection, The Wingless, is published in 2014 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, The Caribbean Writer, and WomenArts Quarterly Review, among others, and can be found online at poets.org, Verse Daily, Inknode, and Occupy Poetry. Most recently, she has served as guest editor for Matter: A Journal of Political Poetry and Commentary, and taught high school students as chair of creative writing for The Blue Ridge Summer Institute for Young Artists.

Alex Mantel is originally from New York City and currently resides in Virginia where he works as a school counselor. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia where he participated in the Young Writer’s Workshop and studied creative writing under poets such as Greg Orr. He also holds an M.Ed. from The George Washington University.

Leslie McGrath’s interviews with poets appear regularly in The Writer’s Chronicle. Winner of the 2004 Pablo Neruda Prize for poetry, she is the author of Out from the Pleiades, a picaresque novella in verse (Jaded Ibis Press, 2014), Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage (2009), a poetry collection, and two chapbooks: Toward Anguish (2007) and By the Windpipe (2014.) Her poems have appeared in The Awl, Agni, The Common, Slate, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing and literature at Central Connecticut State University, and is series editor of The Tenth Gate, a new poetry imprint of The Word Works press.

Joyelle McSweeney is the author of six books of poetry and prose, most recently Percussion Grenade (Fence) Salamandrine, 8 Gothics (Tarpaulin Sky), and a book of critical essays, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults, (University of Michigan Poets on Poetry Series, 2014). Her play Dead Youth, or, the Leaks won the inaugural Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Playwrights and is forthcoming from Litmus Press. With Johannes Göransson, she co-edits Action Books and teaches at Notre Dame.

Urayoán Noel is Assistant Professor of English and Spanish at New York University. He is the author of In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press, 2014) and several books of poetry in English and Spanish, including, EnUncIAdOr (Editora Educación Emergente, 2014) and the forthcoming, Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico (University of Arizona Press). Noel is a former CantoMundo, Ford Foundation, and Bronx Council on the Arts fellow, and a contributing editor of NACLA Report on the Americas.

Geoffrey Nutter’s fourth book, The Rose of January, appeared in 2013 from Wave Books. He has taught poetry at NYU, Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Iowa. He lives in New York City.

Martin Ott is a former U.S Army interrogator. He lives in Los Angeles, where he writes, often about his misunderstood city. He is the author of four books of poetry: Underdays, (Notre Dame University Press, 2015), Captive, De Novo Prize winner, (C&R Press), and Poets’ Guide to America and Yankee Broadcast Network (2014), co-written with John F. Buckley and published by Brooklyn Arts Press. In 2013, he published his debut novel The Interrogator’s Notebook (Story Merchant Books). www.martinottwriter.com

Trace Peterson’s two favorite things are sex and literary criticism. Author of the poetry book Since I Moved In (Chax Press) and numerous chapbooks of poems, she is also editor/publisher of EOAGH, co-editor of the new anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books) which was a finalist for a 2013 Lambda Literary Award, and co-editor of the forthcoming Gil Ott: Collected Writings (Chax Press). From 2009-2012, she curated the TENDENCIES: Poetics & Practice series inspired by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick at CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she is currently a Ph.D. Candidate.

Justin Petropoulos is the author of two collections of poetry, Eminent Domain (Marsh Hawk Press 2011), selected by Anne Waldman for the 2010 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and (Jaded Ibis Press, 2013), a collaborative work with multimedia artist, Carla Gannis. His poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Columbia Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Mandorla, Portland Review, and elsewhere. He is the site director of an after-school program for elementary age children, and teaches composition and creative writing at New Jersey City University.

Marge Piercy has published eighteen poetry volumes, most recently The Hunger Moon: New & Selected Poems. Her new poetry collection, Made in Detroit, will be released by Knopf in March 2015. Piercy has also published seventeen novels, including Sex Wars. Her first short story collection, The Cost Of Lunch, Etc., was recently published by PM Press.

Rebecca Ariel Porte lives in North America. Recent work appears, among other places, in the Los Angeles Review of Books and at io9.

John Reed (born February 7, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of four novels: A Still Small Voice (2000), Snowball’s Chance (2002) with a preface by Alexander Cockburn, The Whole (2005), and All the World’s a Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare (2008). His fifth book, Tales of Woe (2010), is a collection of twenty-five stories, chronicling true stories of abject misery.

David Rivard’s books include Otherwise Elsewhere, Sugartown, and Wise Poison, winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The poems included here are from Standoff, forthcoming in 2016. Among his awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and the NEA, as well as the 2006 O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, in recognition of both his writing and teaching. He teaches in the M.F.A. in Writing program at the University of New Hampshire.

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally celebrated poet with over ninety books of poetry and twelve assemblages of traditional and avant-garde poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred and Poems for the Millennium, volumes 1-3. Recent books of poems include Concealments & Caprichos, A Cruel Nirvana, A Poem of Miracles, and Retrievals: Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010. His most recent big book is Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader, and he is now working on a global and historical anthology of “outside and subterranean poetry.”

Tomaž Šalamun is the author of more than 30 collections of poetry in Slovenian and English. He published his first collection, Poker (1966), at the age of 25. His poetry, using elements of surrealism and polyphony, is influenced by the work of Charles Simic and Charles Baudelaire.
He has won the Jenko Prize, Slovenia’s Prešeren and Mladost Prizes, and a Pushcart Prize. Šalamun and his German translator, Fabjan Hafner, were awarded the European Prize for Poetry by the German city of Muenster. His poetry has been widely anthologized and translated into more than 20 languages. Tomaž Šalamun died in December 2014.

Maureen Seaton has authored sixteen poetry collections—most recently, Fibonacci Batman: New & Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013)—and a memoir, Sex Talks to Girls (University of Wisconsin Press). Her awards include the Iowa Poetry Prize, Lambda Literary Award, the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, and an NEA Fellowship. Her work has been honored in both the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Poetry. Chax Press published Stealth, her first collaboration with Samuel Ace, in 2011. She currently teaches at the University of Miami, Florida.​

Anis Shivani is a poet, fiction writer, and critic in Houston, Texas. His books include Anatolia and Other Stories, Against the Workshop, The Fifth Lash and Other Stories, and My Tranquil War and Other Poems, and the forthcoming books, Karachi Raj: A Novel and Soraya: Sonnets, both out in 2015. Books recently finished or in progress include the novels, A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters or Less and Abruzzi, 1936, and a collection of essays, Literature in the Age of Globalization.

Vandana Singh is an award-winning writer of speculative fiction. She has a Ph.D. in particle physics and teaches at a small, lively state university near Boston, where she is also a scholar of climate change. Her writing website is http://vandana-writes.com

John Skoyles’ most recent book is A Moveable Famine, about a life in poetry. He has published four books of poetry, a collection of personal essays, a memoir, and a book of short fiction, The Nut File (Jaded Ibis Press, 2015). His work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and others. He teaches at Emerson College and is the poetry editor of Ploughshares.

Tracy K. Smith received the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection Life on Mars. She is also the author of the memoir Ordinary Light. She teaches at Princeton University.

Adam Strauss has one full-length collection, For Days, out with BlazeVox, and poems in the anthology The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press). Some of the poems included in this anthology are from a manuscript titled Braided Sand Country, and are dedicated to his mom—Gayle Strauss—and the poet Cole Swensen.

Stephanie Strickland has published 8 books of print poetry, including Dragon Logic (Ahsahta, 2013). A new edition of her award-winning Penguin volume, V: WaveTercets/Losing L’una appeared from SpringGun with accompanying app for iPad, created in collaboration with Ian Hatcher. She has collaborated on 9 digital poems, most recently Sea and Spar Between and Duels—Duets, with Nick Montfort, and House of Trust, with Ian Hatcher. Recent writing appears in Boston Review, Vlak, New Binary Press, and Best American Poetry 2013. A member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization, she co-edited Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1. More at stephaniestrickland.com.

Celina Su was born in São Paulo and lives in Brooklyn. Her writing includes a poetry chapbook from Belladonna*, three books on the politics of social policy and civil society, and pieces in journals such as n+1, Aufgabe, and Boston Review. She co-founded Kwah Dao/ the Burmese Refugee Project in Thailand in 2001, received her Ph.D. in Urban Studies from MIT, and currently teaches political science at the City University of New York. Her honors include the Berlin Prize and the Whiting Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Jane Summer’s short stories and poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Spoon River Poetry Review, Literal Latte and numerous other publications and anthologies. Her novel The Silk Road has recently been recorded for Audible.com. A.M. Homes selected Summer’s story “Peaceful Village” for inclusion in the 2013 edition of The Masters Review, and Ruth Reichl once chose her submission for a New York Times food writing contest Her cross-genre work Erebus is forthcoming (Spring 2015) from Sibling Rivalry Press. In high school she was voted Class Wit but she doesn’t feel like laughing anymore.

Terese Svoboda is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, and her latest book of poetry is Weapons Grade. When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: Selected and New, will appear in 2015, as will, she hopes, a biography of the feminist modernist poet Lola Ridge.

Yuriy Tarnawsky has authored some three dozen books of poetry, fiction, plays and essays. An engineer and linguist by training, he has worked as computer scientist specializing in Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence, as well as Professor of Ukrainian Literature and Culture. He was born in Ukraine but was raised in the West. He writes in Ukrainian and English and resides in the New York City metropolitan area. His books include the novel, Three Blondes and Death, a collection of stories, Short Tails, three collections of mini-novels, The Placebo Effect Trilogy, a book of Heuristic poetry, Modus Tollens (Jaded Ibis Press), and the play, Not Medea.

t thilleman’s books include poetry, Three Sea Monsters and Onönyxa & Therseyn, and the novel Gowanus Canal, Hans Knudsen. His collaborations with j/j hastain are Approximating Diapason and Clef Manifesto, Snag as well as the forthcoming glossary, Tongue a Queer Anomaly, from which the selections published in Devouring The Green are taken. tt’s literary essay/memoir, Blasted Tower, is available from Shakespeare & Co./Toad Suck. Ongoing and online, tt blogs musings taken from the Kamasutra and others at conchwoman.wordpress.com.

Sam Truitt is the author of seven books in the Vertical Elegies series, including, most recently, Dick: A Vertical Elegy (Lunar Chandelier). For more: samtruitt.org

Lindsay Turner’s poems and criticism appear in Lana Turner Journal, Kenyon Review, WebConjunctions, Boston Review, FIELD, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Originally from northeast Tennessee, she holds degrees from Harvard College, New York University, and the Université Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle. She is currently a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Virginia.

Laura Vena is a writer and translator with work in Super Arrow, Tarpaulin Sky, In Posse Review, The Dirty Fabulous, and Antennae. She is a contributing editor at ENTROPY Magazine and is interested in works of a fantastic nature and those that investigate the ethical and aesthetic considerations of representation.

Catherine Wagner’s collections of poetry include Nervous Device (City Lights, 2012), My New Job (Fence, 2009), Macular Hole (Fence, 2004), and Miss America (Fence, 2001). Her poems have been translated into Bengali, German, and Swedish. She is professor in the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she lives with her son.

Ken L. Walker carries a Kentucky driver’s license even though he has lived in New York for the past 7 years. Previous work can be found in The Poetry Project Newsletter, likewise folio, The Seattle Review, Atlas Review, Lumberyard, and in the chapbook Twenty Glasses of Water (Diez Press).

Sharon White’s book, Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia, won the AWP award in creative nonfiction. She is author of two collections of poetry, Eve & Her Apple and Bone House, and her memoir, Field Notes, A Geography of Mourning, received the Julia Ward Howe Prize, Honorable Mention, from the Boston Authors Club. Other awards include a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, the Leeway Foundation Award for Achievement, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship, the Calvino Award, and an NEA Fellowship. Boiling Lake, a collection of short fiction, is published by Jaded Ibis Press (2015).

Sam Witt is poetry editor of Jaded Ibis Press and author of the poetry collections, Everlasting Quail (UPNE, 2001), winner of the Katherine Nason Bakeless Prize, and Sunflower Brother (Cleveland State University Press, 2006). Awards include the Red Hen Press Poetry Award, Pitch Poetry Award and Meridian Editors’ Prize. Individual poems and articles have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Boston Review, Georgia Review, Wired, Computerworld, San Francisco Chronicle, Black Warrior Review and New England Review, among many others. He has taught at Harvard University and Whitman College and is now Assistant Professor of English, Creative Writing, at Framingham State University. More at www.samwittpoetry.com.

CJ Wisler was born and raised in Billings, Montana. She graduated with a B.A in English from Whitman College in 2011. During college, she worked at the national award-winning Whitman College Pioneer Newspaper for three years as a writer and editor. CJ now lives in Seattle. Devouring the Green is CJ’s first publication, and she is honored to be a part of such a wonderful project.

Monica Youn is the author of two books of poetry: Barter (Graywolf Press 2003) and Ignatz (Four Way Books 2010), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. A former lawyer, she has previously taught poetry at Bennington College, Columbia University, and the Warren Wilson College M.F.A. for Writers. She now teaches creative writing at Princeton University. These poems are from a manuscript-in-progress Blackacre.

Tom Yuill’s first book of poetry, Medicine Show, is published by the University of Chicago Press, and was selected by Ravi Shankar, along with Lynn Emanuel’s Noose and Hook, as runner-up for San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center Award. He has also published work in A Public Space, Literary Imaginations, Newsday and Salamander among others. He will be teaching at Old Dominion University in Virginia this year.

Jennifer Zilm has a B.A., M.A. in Religious Studies from University of British Columbia and was a Ph.D candidate in Early Judaism and Early Christianity at McMaster University. Her poetry and scholarship have appeared in publications, Prism International, The Antigonish Review, Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Room, Women in Judaism: A Multi-disciplinary Journal, Poetry and Prayer in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Vallum: Contemporary Poetry. Her first chapbook, The Whole and Broken Yellows (Frog Hollow: 2013), explores art, religion and mental health, using The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. She recently finished two poetry manuscripts, This Bright Borderline and Waiting Room.